Some of the most popular places to “connect” these days are those sites that are often called social networking sites—places that allow you to create your own page and connect with friends and family to see what is going in their lives. Some of the biggest web sites for social networking are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
In this chapter, we will show you how to access these sites. You will learn how to update your status, tweet, and keep track of those who are both important or simply of interest to you.
Facebook was founded in February of 2004. Since that time, it has served as the premier site for users to connect, re-connect, and share information with friends, co-workers, and family. Today, over 800 million people use Facebook as their primary source of “catching up” with the people who matter most to them.
NOTE: You cannot play Facebook games inside the Facebook app or via the Facebook.com website on your iPhone. This may disappoint you if you are a big Facebook game player; however, you can often get the same games (e.g., FarmVille) from the App Store, and then connect them to your Facebook computer version to keep your place.
On your iPhone, you have three primary ways of accessing your Facebook page at the time of publishing:
www.facebook.com
.http://touch.facebook.com
.NOTE: The iPhone version of the Facebook app is a bit more limited than the full web site, but it is much easier to navigate.
You can access Facebook by using its iPhone-specific app or using one of the two previously mentioned Facebook web sites in your Safari browser. We will focus on the Facebook app for the iPhone for the duration of this chapter.
In order to find the app, use the Search feature in the App Store and simply type in “Facebook.”
You can also go to the Social Networking category in the App Store and find the official Facebook app, as well as many other Facebook-related apps.
NOTE: Some of the apps may look like “official” Facebook apps, and they do cost money. However, the only “official” app is the iPhone/iPod app shown to the right.
In order to connect to your account on Facebook, you will need to locate the icon you just installed and click it. We use the example of Facebook here, but the process is very similar for the rest of the apps.
Once Facebook is successfully downloaded, the icon should look something like this.
To get the Facebook app installed on your iPhone, start up the App Store and search for “Facebook.” Tap the Install button from the Facebook app listing.
Once Facebook is downloaded and installed, the first thing you will see is the Login screen. Input your account information—your email address and password.
After you log in the first time, you will see a Push Notifications warning message.
Click OK if you want to allow these messages, which can be pokes from other Facebook friends, notes, status update notifications, and more.
Once you log in, you will see the Facebook screen main screen. Tap the Facebook logo to navigate around the app.
Toggle between the Navigation icons and your current location by tapping the word Facebook at the top of the page.
For example, if you are in the News Feed and tap Facebook, you will see all the icons. Tap Facebook again and you will return to the News Feed.
From the icons page, you can access your News Feed, Profile, Friends, Messages, Places, Groups, Events, Photos, and Chat.
Follow these steps to communicate with your friends on Facebook from the Facebook app on your iPhone:
An easy and fun thing to do with Facebook is to upload pictures. Here, we show you how to upload pictures in the Facebook app:
NOTE: When you upload a photo, the image quality won’t be the same as it was originally on your iPhone.
Depending on your settings for Facebook push notifications, you can be inundated by updates, wall posts, and invitations. If you don’t have too many Facebook friends and you want to know when someone is writing something on your wall or commenting on a post or picture, just set your push notification to ON, as shown in the next section.
When a notification comes in, it will appear in Notification Center or as Lock Screen Info if your phone is locked.
To access Facebook from the notification, just slide the Facebook icon across the screen or slide the Arrow button to unlock and read the message.
Here’s how to adjust the settings for the Facebook app:
Follow these steps to adjust push notification settings:
TIP: The Facebook app will bring in Facebook profile pictures to your Contacts list. This can be quite humorous, depending on the pictures. However, it can also upload your own, non-Facebook contacts’ information to Facebook’s servers, which might raise privacy concerns for you, your family, and friends.
LinkedIn has core functionality very similar to Facebook, but it tends to be focused on business and career interests. This is in contrast to Facebook, which is focused more on personal friends and games. With LinkedIn, you can connect and re-connect with current and past business associates, send messages, see what people are up to, have discussions, and more.
At the time of publishing, the status of LinkedIn was very similar to Facebook. You can go to the regular LinkedIn site on the Safari browser, or you can download the LinkedIn app for the iPhone.
Which is better? We liked the LinkedIn app for the iPhone slightly better than the full LinkedIn.com site in Safari. It was easier to navigate using the LinkedIn app with the large buttons, but you could see more on the screen in the Safari version. We recommend giving both options a try and seeing which you like better—it is really a matter of personal preference.
The process for downloading the LinkedIn app is similar to the process for downloading the Facebook app. Start the App Store app on your iPhone, type “LinkedIn” into the Search window, and then locate the app. The LinkedIn app is free, so tap the FREE button to install it.
Once the app is installed, click the LinkedIn icon and enter your login information.
LinkedIn has a zone-based navigation system. Tap any stack to move to that zone, and then tap the LinkedIn logo at the top to return to the Home screen.
One of the things you will most likely do the most with the LinkedIn app is communicate with your connections. The easiest way to do that is to follow these steps:
Twitter was started in 2006. Twitter is essentially an SMS (text message)–based social networking site. It is often referred to as a micro-blogging site, and it is a place where the famous and not-so-famous can share what’s on their mind. The catch is that you have only 140 characters to get your point across.
With Twitter, you subscribe to follow someone who tweets messages. You might also find that people will start to follow you. If you want to follow us, we are @garymadesimple
on Twitter.
@username
.NOTE: If you tweet your location, potentially anyone on Twitter could find out where you are—including the fact that you’re not at home or work. If privacy is a concern, toggle TweetLocation to OFF.
The official Twitter app takes a streamlined approach to using Twitter. The Home screen shows you the tweets from those you are following, andthe full message is nice and large.
Along the bottom are five icons, the first being the main Twitter feed. The other icons are Mentions, Direct Messages, Search, and the More button, which takes you to your Profile, Favorites, Drafts, Lists, and Accounts and| Settings.
The Compose Tweet icon is in the top-left corner (see Figure 25–1).
Figure 25–1. The layout of the Twitter app's Home page
To refresh your list of tweets, just pull down the main page and you will see the Pull down to refresh notification at the top. Once the page is pulled down, you will see a Release to refresh note. Release the page and it will refresh the tweets.
To display your Twitter profile, touch the More button and then touch My Profile.
To see your tweets, just touch Tweets.
To see those tweets you have labeled as favorites, touch the Favorites button.
To see those individuals you are following, touch the Following button.
NOTE: The number corresponding to your followers, those you are following, and your tweets is displayed above the title of the button.
Scroll down the page to see your Retweets; your Lists; and Services to which you can subscribe.
Touch the Compose button and the New Tweet screen pops up. The character counter will count down from 140 as you type your message. Here are some things you can do from the New Tweet screen:
From your Twitter app's Home screen, just touch one of your tweets for the following options:
NOTE: Unlike with Facebook and LinkedIn, you can find a variety of alternative third-party Twitter apps in the App Store. If you don't like the official Twitter for iPhone app, try out Tweetbot, Twitterrific, or one of the many other apps.
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